Blaming Arnett
It wasn't enough for Peter Arnett to fraternize with the Iraqis, he had to go lure Walter Cronkite out of the morgue.

The old man penned a comment in today's New York Times redolent with High Church ambiguity: Arnett, or rather "Mr. Arnett hangs by a rope of his own weaving," wrote Cronkite: "His long experience makes it all the more difficult to understand how he could have been so grossly irresponsible in granting that interview. He besmirched his reputation, offended a nation and lost his job -- justifiably so -- even though he will still report for The Daily Mirror in Britain."

But then Cronkite admitted that Arnett did what any reporter would have done: "Clearly Mr. Arnett, in granting the interview, was cozying up to sources he depended on for, first, their tolerance of him in Baghdad and, second, any information he could get: about Iraq's military posture, its claims of combat successes and techniques, and the morale of its populace."

Then he concluded: "But Mr. Arnett's firing is more than a personal setback. With him gone from the airwaves, Americans have lost an eye on Baghdad that had proved a valuable addition to our knowledge of a mysterious enemy."

Guess that means Cronkite will have to watch Al-Jazeera like the rest of us.